“So you deign to return to us,” Willis said. “Where have you been all night?”

I should have put up a fight and gotten myself killed, she thought, now that it was too late.

Willis struck her. She fell, and the earth did not catch her. She fell into the darkness, into the vortex of that catastrophic year.

A grinning Sainnite forced her to watch what he did to her, even though she could not feel it.

The Paladins lifted her up, and he struck her again.

He cut off her toes, one by one. His companions held her head by the hair, so she could not look away.

“Tell me where you have been!” he cried. He raised his fist.

A war horse’s hoof struck her in the head. She fell.

Ransel jerked her up by the hair. His familiar, battered war blade shone in a light too vivid to be sunlight.

“You are a traitor!” he cried, triumphant. The Paladins, startled and bewildered, or angry and jeering, gathered around.

“You are no longer one of the people!” Ransel cried. The Ashawala’i people stood silent, accepting his judgment.

He struck her, and she fell. She did not know anymore who was her brother, or her companion at arms, or her enemy. She fell, and she fell.

She opened her eyes, but could scarcely see. Upon bare ground, she lay bleeding, unwatched. It was a contemptuous inattention, for they certainly knew that she could not flee: she had no toes; her back was broken. Ransel had cut off her hair, thus rejecting her from the tribe. Why had they not brought her the suicide drink? The Ashawala’i had given all other outcasts that mercy: why not her?

She felt blindly for her weapons. The dagger was gone, and the pistols. But her small knife was still tucked into her blood‑smeared boot.

She held the blade to her own throat, but could not cut deeply enough. She began to weep. “Lord Death, now I choose you.” Her fingers were painted with bright red ink. She wrote a message to him upon the shining metal of the blade. Then someone noticed, and with an exclamation snatched the knife out of her hand.

At the height of a stroke, Karis dropped her hammer. The red hot piece of iron fell from the tongs, and those also clattered onto the stone floor. A boy rushed over with the water bucket, but she dropped to her knees upon the stone floor, and swept her hand across it to clear the debris. With a scrap of iron she scratched a line upon the stone, then another crossing it, then a third.

“That’s the Raven,” said the boy helpfully, water sloshing out over his feet.

“What?”

“That’s the Raven glyph. Isn’t it?” The boy peered down at the marks she had made. “Your mastersign!” he said, apparently trying his best to make sense of her crazy behavior. “The messenger of good and bad fortune. It just came to you, right? And you wanted to write it down before you forgot, right? And now you can be a forgemaster, and you’ll take me to work for you?”

“The Raven.” Karis looked again at the marks she had drawn on the floor. “Something has gone terribly wrong.”

Zanja lay paralyzed in a bloodstained hay cart. At a distant mountain peak, the moon lifted her pale face to the starry sky. Except for the occasional calls of the soldiers on watch duty, the Sainnite camp lay silent. Zanja watched the sky, able only to wait, now that all choices had been taken away from her.

A slight sound made her turn her head, and a slim shadow separated from the darkness: lithe and silent, grinning teeth shining with moonlight. “Oh my brother,” she breathed. “Why do you risk your life for me? I am already dead, but you can still live.“

He came to her, though, silently laughing his raven’s laugh. “You trickster,” she said. “You have come to take my life in mercy at last.”

Yes. His blade was in his hand. She smiled at him, her courageous friend. “Come, then,” she said. And then a Samnite uttered a warning shout, and they rose up and killed him.

It had happened again. It would happen again, again, and again, while she lay hopelessly screaming, and Ransel’s sturdy heart pumped his lifeblood onto the ground. Over and over, he came to deliver the mercy blow, and over and over they killed him.

A heavy door grated open. There was a terrible blaze of light and a flapping shadow, like a big bird’s wings. “Come out of there,” Willis said.

“She’s been unusually quiet the last few hours,” another voice said doubtfully.

Emil’s voice, low and quiet, said, “She has been shouting and you left her unattended? She has a serious injury!”

For Emil, quiet meant angry, angry almost beyond speech. “I’m going in after her,” he said. But Zanja had managed to get to her feet by then, and shakily walked into the light. Emil was just a shadow she could see even with her eyes closed, and surely she was no more than a shadow to him, a being of the Underworld, a house habitated by memory.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

He should not be merciful to her, or he would die. But she took the hand he reached down to her, and let him haul her out of the darkness, into the dusty, milling chaos of a hot and sunny farmyard.

Through a blaze of tears brought on by sunlight, she saw farmers in their summertime work clothes, come to see who had been locked in their cellar and why. She saw each of Emil’s lieutenants, who had never, even at a funeral, seemed so grim. She saw many other Paladins, some who had jeered at her, some who might eventually have become her friends. All of them stared at her, and at the dignified man she’d had the temerity to call her brother, not so long ago.

His rage was masked, but she felt it like knife on bone. “You have made friends with a Sainnite,” he said.

She knew what she had to do. “Yes, sir.”

“And you went out the other night to meet this person?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What for?”

This time, he would not die. He would not help her as his enemies lay in wait. Better for him to hate her than to die because of her. She said, “I went to lead an attack on Willis’s unit, but they said they were not ready.”

His hand rested on his pistol. This close to her, he would get a good shot, and even in anger would shoot well, kindly, remembering his affection even as he knew it was betrayed. But then he sighed, and all was lost. “I know that is a lie,” he said.

A voice spoke behind Zanja. “She intends her lie as a gift.”

Zanja did not have to turn to know who had spoken. A black shadow flapped upon the ground in front of her. Her frail courage faltered.

Emil said, his voice still soft with anger, “A misguided gift.”

Zanja said, “Sir, it is my calling to transgress, but it is my duty to cause no harm by that transgression. Let me do my duty.”

Emil gazed into her eyes, expressionless, unblinking. And then he turned away, to speak to his lieutenants. “This matter will not turn out the way any of us might expect. It seems ill‑advised to do this so publicly, when so much damage already has been done to our community.”

Willis said, “No,” as though he already was the commander. This was, certainly, his spectacle.

Emil smiled oddly, without amusement. “Well then, at least let’s get into the shade, for courtesy to our guest.” He gestured toward an arbor of flowering vines, where there were some inviting benches in the shade.

Zanja turned then, and looked into the scarred, sun‑browned face of Norina Truthken. “What are you doing here? It is not your business.”

Norina said, “Who did you think would come?”

Though Zanja had lived with her until four months ago, she’d had no idea that Norina was pregnant. Even the heavy clothing of winter could not have concealed it now. Though her dust‑stained clothing and red‑rimmed eyes suggested a heroic journey had brought her here so quickly, her jutting belly hinted that at any moment she might deliver a child. Just the thought of her as a mother made Zanja’s head hurt.